It’s no surprise that visual blogging has become the hip new trend. The world is a colorful place and photos often are a better way to communicate than words. Many bloggers have migrated from tradition blogging methods to visual blogging primarily via apps such as Instagram.

Applications like Instagram make it so easy to take and post photos it’s no surprise that there are now 100 million active accounts holders. With competition this thick how to you stand out and establish yourself as a blogger and get your work seen?

Take Advantage Of Hashtags

In the social media world it’s all about hashtags. There are 3 types of hashtags that you should familiarize yourself with. The first is branded hashtags used to describe your brand and business. It should be unique and used for the marketing and promotion of your brand. Consistently using the same hashtag when posting on Instagram will help create brand awareness with your followers.

The next commonly used hashtag are trending hashtags. These tags are used to categorize a popular topic that followers are interested in now. Trending hashtags don’t seem to stick around for very long as they are used to describe what’s popular now. These tags should be used when describing your brand as it can help with reaching a new and larger audience outside of your fans and followers.

The last frequently used hashtag are then content tags. This is just simply what you would use to describe your product and post.

By taking advantage of all three hashtags you can define your brand and make it stand out. Reach a larger audience through trending hashtags and connect to new followers through content hashtags.

Remember to practice social media etiquette when posting on Instagram and only use relevant hashtags. Using too many hashtags when posting can look like spamming and unprofessional which can irritate Instagram followers and users.

Posting Regularly

If you want to take your visual blogging seriously you must set aside time for it and make it a habit. Posting to a schedule will help you organize yourself and let followers take you more seriously. At minimum there should be one post a day as this acts as reminder to your followers.

Optimize Your Profile

When completing your profile on Instagram make sure to optimize for keywords. Use similar keywords to the ones you would use for hashtags to describe your brand and this will make is easier for followers to find you. Also include all contact details and link directly back to your blog if you are still running it alongside your Instagram blog.

Never Buy Instagram Followers

Buying followers on Instagram is more common then you think and it’s not just high profiled people who are doing it. There are hundreds of websites from all over the world offering this type of service, even Canadian, Australian and German sites sell followers for cheap. The problem with buying Instagram followers when you’re just starting out compared to someone that is already famous is that it’s really obvious. It doesn’t look fake when Rihanna gets thousands of likes for her photos but when some who only has a hundred followers and gets thousands of likes it’s just not believable.

The only way for you to build your Instagram profile is to start using it today. The more frequently you use it and familiarize yourself with the app the more you will learn what works and what gets you the most shares and followers.